Things that Should Exist

[forsyth]

Why the hell don't we have an entire branch of the military, or a separate group even, dedicated to keeping order and rebuilding stuff? That's most of what military interventions that aren't planned by madmen and liars are going to be, and it'd have a billion uses besides. But it's not as sexy as a bunch of long hard missiles and planes and boats and guns that are good ad spitting death, I guess. And the recruits would have more useful skills once they left, too.

Shit, that's what we really needed in Iraq, peacekeepers and builders, trained to deal with people and with at least a little knowledge of Arabic. Blowing shit up only gets so far. Is that really so hard to grasp?

Comments

[losttoy.livejournal.com]

Well ... there is a reason why "Military Inteligence" is an oxymoron. War is easy. Anything else takes brains. There is sure enough not enough of that to even share one in the administration. Face it, the world is going to hell. The fact is if you are in man to man fight. If one man has a gun and one man with a book, the guy with the book can talk and the guy with the gun will kill. Who wins?

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

I'm not talking about just one man. I'm talking about a lot of people. People trained to fight, if they have to, but trained to rebuild and to build and to deal with people so they don't have to use their guns. We already have all the pieces for it. It's something we could do, if we cared to, if our leaders had the sense and the will. Which our leaders don't. Which is why we need new leaders, and to figure out how to defeat the people who keep pushing for leaders like we have now. Not just give up.

[losttoy.livejournal.com]

Well yeah, the idea maje sense. But that is why it will never happen. The military has a budget and it does not go for that stuff like education and peace. New weapons; that is what it goes for. Change does not happen there. Sure we still have a cold war style army that is not trained for today's warfare. Does not matter ...

Sucks, but true. But no government official will be able to make that change in four or even eight years.

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

Seems like all the better reason to support something like that. If properly used, it could outflank the Republicans on "National Security", since it'd be calling for an increased and better equipped military, even if its main missions wouldn't be blowing people up. And because its main missions aren't blowing people up, but building and rebuilding and peacekeeping, it'd be something that could fly with liberals. There'd be reflexive "anti-war" people, and there'd be cries from the Republicans about making the army into police, but those can be addressed. Or ignored.

And it's an idea that makes sense.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

You mean some sort of a...Peace Corps?

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

Sort of. But not quite. More like the Army Corps of Engineers plus Peace Corps + Police/UN Peacekeepers + Translators + Diplomats + Political science dudes. A Nation-Building corps.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Because if they had a Bunch of Reconstruction Guys who were separate from the Blowing Shit Up Guys, they wouldn't be able to send in the Blowing Shit Up Guys while pretending they were the Bunch of Reconstruction Guys.

Plus the Blowing Shit Up Guys wouldn't be able to occasionally get some mollifying PR by building stuff, thus leading to a lack of militarily usefuly momentary confusion as to what they were going to do at any given moment and whether or not to nuke them into glass the moment they appeared on your border.

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

It'd be a continuum. Everybody'd learn to blow shit up a little, and build shit a little. Some would just specialize more in blowing shit up, and some more in building shit. In theory, anyway.